Worker Bees Blog is where BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page muses about marketing, social media, customer service and other Web 2.0 inanities

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

My reaction to more Bloghercon reaction

Now, there's one man in the blogosphere who has thought a lot lately about diversity, particular gender diversity in our online community. Jon Garfunkel has done quite a bit of research to provide first, a timeline of online discussions about women and blogging. He then goes a step further and discusses the shift from talking into action. I think it's a great baseline to understand the background here. As Lisa has said, we don't think we invented the wheel here. And I don't mean to imply he's the only man with thoughtful comments on the subject. He's not.

Then there are other voices: Shelley at Burningbird continues to be required reading. I know she has put off some notable people with her strong language and metaphors, but make no mistake: she is articulating something that many of us don't have the guts to say out loud. I have heard this and more from some of the nicest, men-loving women you could meet. And Elayne Riggs is just one of them.

Mike Rowehl brings up a fascinating point: that if we want to increase our network, our reach, our influence, we have to include the tool developers in our discussion...it's the tools and how they work that partly drives how the network works. Of course, he might be just a teeny bit biased, since he works for blog search tool Feedster.

Susan Mernit likes the idea. She even offered her help on one of my blog posts. I have to admit I'm kind of surprised to notice she doesn't allow comments, so I could thank her for her post. Susan, was this always the way with your blog?

Liz Ditz seems to be conflicted about the concept. Let me just say, she says two things which are always included in any of my rants about blogging: 1. blogging is just a tool, like a pencil and paper and 2. Blogging does not equal political blogs. DefinitiveInk makes a similar point. I might add that the diaristic (is that a word?) bloggers are just a afflicted with blinders as the politico-journalistic bloggers. Some of them seem very offended that blogs can be used as a business tool. Or rather that we one would dare to sully blogging's good name by doing so.

Full Circle is a good, ongoing source of commentary on Bloghercon and discussions of gender issues in general.

Standard Deviance gets part of the Bloghercon mission, but misses the final point...which is to strengthen our own network and eventually link to existing networks. One big happy family (eventually) you know?

Tony Gentile has a rather amusing take on it...in fact I'm going to line up to get tips in my tip jar. Yes, Tony, we see the irony. No, Tony, I don't think Elle was being particularly divisive to begin with, and no, Tony, I think it's quite the opposite of playing the victim to decide to get together and figure out a strategy to figure out what we want and how to get it.

And finally Bloghercon gets mentioned several times on this bluggcast. Yes, you heard me it's a bluggcast. They interview Dave Winer and ask him about it. Come on you cute little aliens, ask Lisa and me if you want to know about Bloghercon. I want my voice to sound like that too!

No, another finally: this made me laugh out loud...and God knows after trying to keep up with all of the above chatter, I needed a good laugh. Check out how Nostradamus predicted the rise and fall of white male bloggers here. For those afflicted with an ironyectomy, this would be categorized as humor were it the only cite in this post.

OK, that's it. I've been working on this post, and collecting these links long enough. Damn. Perhaps I just should have posted the Google (over 9000 hits!) and Technorati (only 42?) Bloghercon search results. Why did I just think of that now?

I hear "Blogging does not equal political blogs." I don't have political in my blogger archetypes-- read my four questions of how I split up blogs/writers into 5 archetypes. What it comes down to is, if you are writing in the public interest (which may be a synonym for poltiics), people will want to talk about your writing. I find it difficult in these media confabs to always have to consider people blogging (writing, taking photographs) in the personal interest.

Now, it's still a hypothesis. I'm still waiting for more feedback. I have a sense that some people may feel that they straddle, but it does complicate things.

And not only am I a theorist, but I'm a tool developer. So that's why I've continued having an interest in this over the last six weeks. And I do want to follow Esther Dyson's plaint: "Blogs are great for talking, not for listening." So I'd very much to hear the bloghercon group address that. (Since when Dyson introduced it to the Berkman confab, they... didn't listen.)

Susan: I was afraid it was something like that. This is one of the reasons I don't read most of the comments on other people's sites. There always seem to be the people who can't stop themselves (and don't want to) from being complete jerks. NO time to absorb such negativity.

Jon: I'm not sure I agree that only people who write about things in the public interest will get other people talking. If so, then there would be no fiction, no memoirs etc. Sometimes writing can be beautiful and generate lots of interest because it touches something more than our minds. Check out Lenn Pryor's post on his sister's death as just one example.http://lennpryor.blogs.com/lenn/2005/02/lori_ann_pryor_.html

I agree with you on tools. This is cohort Eleanor Kruszewski's are of particular interest. She's constantly hacking around trying to figure out how to share, collaborate, converse and listen better via existing blog tools.http://ellementk.com/

Oops. I was certainly not clear! When I said "people will want to talk about your writing" -- I mean people at conferences devoted to journalism. Of course people in general react to all sorts of writing, I did not mean to deny that.

And also, I think we can agree that the average public writer reach more people than the average personal writer. That's why journalism is interested in the public writers.